Books and publications

“Debra Kidd knows her trade. If you have any commitment to the English schools system then there are many thought-provoking ideas for you to think through here. Please read this book, it is important”. Martin Illingworth, review Amazon.co.uk

“Bold and impassioned” TES

“If you only read one book about teaching this year, then there’s a compelling case to be made for ensuring it’s this one, especially if you are feeling frustrated, trapped and undervalued. Debra Kidd’s thinking is crystalline, her prose flawless and her honesty inspiring…It’s a call to arms; a cry for revolution – but with hope and optimism, not anger and resentment. Beautiful.” Teach Secondary

“This is an astonishing book, containing a detailed bibliography with many references to classrooms, blogs and academic institutions. This read is truly for ‘front line’ teachers who stand in classrooms, in front of children every single day. Those who do, will know how important this book is.

It’s a book I wish I had written … Get your hands on a copy now!” Teacher Toolkit

“In this compelling, conceptually-rich and moving book, Debra Kidd creates a unique engagement with the UK educational environment. Taking inspiration from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, she uses insightful analyses of ethnographic data taken from her own classrooms to explore how experiences of uncertainty constitute the living material of educational practice. She shows how the fetishization of certainty, of a fixed stock of knowledge and ‘values’, constrains educational practice now more than ever before in the UK, thanks to increasingly centralized political control. Yet uncertainty, Kidd maintains, is not to be feared. It must instead be seen as a positive contribution to order, as the source of novelty, surprise and transformation. Through eight chapters presented as ‘plateaus’, extended engagements with awkwardness, difficulty and antagonism in the classroom, she extracts from her experiences moments and encounters which exemplify learning in the sense articulated by Deleuze and Guattari, the ‘making of sense from sensation’. Kidd shows with clarity, humour and verve how the classroom can become a site of small resistances that hold open the promise of different futures, multiple lines of flight shot through a deadening crust of compliance and conformity.” Dr Christopher Groves, Research Associate, Energy Biographies, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

“What gives Becoming Mobius its vitality is its humane and empowering approach to its subjects. Kidd steadfastly refuses to allow the voices of the students to become mere data asserting “[t]o be worthy, I need to make the children more than text – more than characters in a story”. In an education system obsessed by data it is refreshing to read a book that brings human beings back into the center of educational discourse.” Joe Harrison-Greaves, Co-Founder of Slow Education